Twenty-One

I changed clothes several times before deciding on the appropriate attire for a bar crawl. I wanted to look approachable, but not eager. Above all, I did not want to look like a working woman, and prostitutes are hard to peg, since they don’t constrain themselves to TV producers’ ideas of what they ought to wear.

Unaccompanied men can walk into bars without raising many eyebrows, but you need a bit of protective coloring to fit in as a lone woman. A waitress’s outfit would be ideal. Or a nun’s habit, the old-fashioned full-dress version, complete with wimple.

Lacking such body armor, the best way to avoid trouble is to arrive with an escort. I considered my choices. Mooney would be delighted, if he wasn’t working. But Mooney looks too much like what he is, and his presence often gives the most willing gossip a temporary case of lockjaw. My other option was Sam Gianelli.

I met Gianelli when I first drove a cab for Green & White, back in college. He hired me, and taught me many things, like never sleep with your boss. I’m descended from cops; he’s descended from robbers, his dad being a local Mafia underboss. The only thing we have in common is that old boy-girl stuff I never understand. There are probably a thousand guys who’d be better for me than Sam Gianelli.

What I could use right now is a twenty-year-old bimbo-lifeguard type, unmarriageable and unchallenging. Restful.

What Sam needs is a submissive Italian Catholic virgin, certified fertile, so Papa Gianelli can have a pack of grandkids.

We’ve both been married before. After Cal, I retired; never again. Sam, on the other hand, just got back from Italy, where he visited the old-country side of the family. One of the items on his agenda turned out to be a surprise trip to the Vatican to petition for an annulment. Papa arranged it; he believes in marriage even more than Sam does.

Half-Jewish divorcée that I am, if I did want to marry Sam, his father would probably have me garroted, shot for good measure, and dropped into Boston Harbor.

I decided to go alone. I called a cab. Cheaper than a traffic ticket or a parking lot.

Midnight the Kat’s was the fourth bar I hit, after Harper’s Ferry, Ryles, and Dixie’s. I’d started out on beer and was still sober because I’d long since switched to club soda with a twist of lime, a drink that can pass for a vodka-and-tonic anyday.

Midnight’s is near Auditorium Station. I remember when it was called the Vanity, which dates me, but I got into the blues scene young. The Vanity’s where I heard the Reverend Gary Davis, the awesome blues preacher himself, play. He was an old man then. Dee got me the tickets. She was studying with him, five bucks a lesson, paid up front, and the lesson could last all day if the teacher stayed pleased with his pupil.

Midnight’s is half bar, half performance-hall. You walk into the bar first, heavy with cigarette smoke, then descend three steps to the music room with its pine-board floor and rickety tables.

The sign over the door says the fire department allows fifty-five patrons. I’ve never counted, but I think the management must pay somebody off, weekends at least. You don’t get the superstars at a small place like this, not even the second rank. People on the way up, or the way down. Some are pretty damn good, and often the best seem on the slide rather than on the make.

I shrugged out of my raincoat for the fourth time. I’d decided to dress down, as usual. Most of my shoes have flat heels, since at six one I don’t need to emphasize my height. In good beige slacks and a turquoise shirt, with a tapestry vest, and a gold chain around my neck, I looked, to my eye at least, like a stock analyst, or a lawyer. Somebody who’d arrived early and was waiting for the rest of the group.

I eyed my watch conspicuously to go with my cover story, comparing it with the wall clock. Ten minutes to twelve. Then, with a sigh, I took a seat at the bar. I ordered my club soda from a man with hairy arms and an anchor tattoo. The TV was tuned to the Red Sox game, which was still in rain delay. The umps would call it at one if the rain didn’t quit by then. The sportscasters were drowned out by music, somebody’s mushy version of “Kind Woman.” The control panel for the stage amps was behind the bar along with the rest of the sound system. Lights flashed as the volume of the music rose and fell.

The stage was an irregularly shaped platform in the far corner of the music room, lit by three baby spots fastened to a low-slung horizontal iron pipe. Loops of cable wrapped the pipe and disappeared into the false ceiling.

I asked the hairy-armed barkeep who was playing tonight. He made a show of staring at a sign posted behind the bar, a calendar with print so small he had to squint.

“Windshear,” he said. “New group. First set coming up. Start in maybe fifteen, twenty minutes.”

I sipped and crowd-watched until a young man came out and fiddled with the microphones, making sure all the cables were plugged into the right jacks, checking the amps on either side of the stage.

He had long pony-tailed hair, black jeans, and a faded black T-shirt. He looked familiar, but that was because I’d talked to somebody just like him at the past four bars.

The crowd had changed from the office escapees of the earlier hours. They were younger, dressed more for display than the muggy August night. There were a couple of serious drinkers at the bar, maybe businessmen far from home, nobody who looked smashed. A few regulars called the bartender Artie.

The pony-tailed man brought out a guitar and placed it on a stand, stage left.

I got up and checked out the brand name.

“Hey,” he said, “careful.”

“That a DeArmond pickup?” I asked, taking a step away from the guitar, which was a nice old Gibson SJN, electrified for the occasion.

“Yeah,” the guy said.

“Yours?”

“I wish.”

“You with the band or the house?”

“The band,” he said, starting to preen a little. “I’m the boards. I play synth, mini-Moog, the whole thing.”

“I’m guitar.”

“Play local?”

“Yeah. Some.”

“Got an ax as nice as that one?”

“Pretty good,” I said.

We traded brand names and who-do-you-knows until I’d established my bona fides. I asked him if he’d heard Chris Smither play at Johnny D’s, and when the last time the Zydeco band had been through, and then I asked him if he knew a Davey who played a big old whanging Gibson Hummingbird.

If Davey had kept anything from his pre-alcoholic life, that would be it. He loved that guitar.

Maybe I’d have to try pawnshops, used instrument shops.…

“Hey,” the guy said, “this a joke?”

“No.”

“I know a guy plays a Hummingbird, but he ain’t no Davey.”

“Who?” I said.

“Plays bass mainly,” he said. “Cal. Some kind of Cajun last name. He’s with the band.”